There's an old line about rights and responsibilities. The GPL tries to find a balance between the two, while the BSD license is mostly concerned about rights. Is it surprising that the GPL has produced this amazing kernel, compiler, and so much more?

As for the rest of the article, it pretty much goes to show why I don't use NetBSD anymore: it simply does not mesh well with my needs as an end user. I could care less if NetBSD is more portable if it does not run on my hardware. I could care less if the package system supports distcc, because I don't have the resources to use it nor do I want to build a significant number of packages. And Xen simply won't interest me until it cooperates with a guest host that I'm interested in.

If your opinion and needs differ, then fine. But I suspect that the majority of people share my opinion, albeit for their own set of reasons. That is why the majority use Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X. Claiming that it is about the hype is a cop-out. Oh sure, hype can influence popularity. But when you've been unpopular for over a decade, you probably have much deeper problems.